Tactical implementation work is often difficult and challenging
By Brian Kreissl
In 2008, I wrote an article for Canadian HR Reporter titled, “In praise of transactional HR.” The basic message was that in our drive to make the profession more strategic, HR might actually be undervaluing certain work that is important and challenging, yet more transactional or tactical in nature than some of the more strategic work.
This applies not only to HR, but also to the business world overall and even society in general. It is my belief we sometimes reward, praise and look up to strategists and big-picture thinkers a little too much, with the result that people who are involved in doing difficult, challenging and important work to actually implement strategy are often overlooked.
Sometimes, it even feels like we reward people who don’t really know how to do detail-oriented work that requires specific knowledge and skills but call themselves strategists to cover the fact they actually know very little. “Don’t bother me with details,” they say. “I’m a big-picture thinker.”
I am sure we’ve all come across people like that who seem to get by with little more than buzzwords, catch phrases and big words. While there are some functions and professions where it is difficult or even impossible to fake it (such as engineering or medicine), this is a problem that exists in HR and other business functions as well.
Strategists cannot do it all alone
But even where people are highly knowledgeable and truly are able to function at a strategic level, I think we sometimes act like those people are able to do it all themselves and have all the answers. The popular myth of the heroic CEO being able to singlehandedly navigate a large company to greatness is an example of this.
While there is no question strategy is vitally important in business, and someone at the top must be there to see the big picture, set direction and respond to internal and external conditions and challenges, we sometimes forget that CEOs of multinational corporations have thousands of people working for them to implement strategy. Many of those people themselves are involved in making strategic decisions and doing important implementation work.
Senior business leaders cannot do it all themselves, nor can they know everything. True leaders understand they can’t be good at everything, but instead must surround themselves with competent people who know what they’re doing. Delegation is particularly important.
However, I believe senior leaders should know at least something about the people and the functions they manage. Technical and professional employees in particular often don’t respect leaders who lack at least a high-level understanding of the work they do.
Being an ‘ideas’ person
Perhaps I am somewhat biased in favour of tactical work, but part of that reason is because I actually find strategic, creative and big-picture-type work to be easier than being “down in the weeds” doing detail-oriented work. I tend to think of myself as an ideas person, although I’m perfectly capable of rolling up my sleeves and doing “real” work as well.
It actually surprised me to hear others say they weren’t “ideas” people because I can generate lots of ideas without any real trouble and it seems hard to relate to those who aren’t able to do that. Of course, whether those ideas are any good or not is a different matter.
I also understand coming up with ideas isn’t necessarily being strategic. It really depends on the nature of the ideas, but people who do strategic work need to be somewhat creative and be able to come up with big picture ideas.
Implications for careers
This all has important implications for people’s careers. Because we in the business world tend to value work of a strategic nature so highly, generally it’s good advice to try to gravitate towards that type of work.
I have even seen fairly junior people who managed to get into strategic work just because they had the audacity and the self-confidence to position themselves as strategists from the outset. Those are the type of people whose careers often end up on the fast track.
However, I believe it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that tactical work is often very difficult, challenging, technical and detail-oriented. We also need to be able to call out so-called “strategists” who use that label to hide the fact they actually know very little.
